What people are looking for in leaders

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 8th, 2008

I wish I was my father. Not necessarily for most of the reasons you might suspect. He is a permanent alien in the grand old United States of America; and I wish I could cast a vote down there. Not since John Kennedy became the most quoted politician ever have we seen such great speech writing from an American politician.

I would vote for Barack Obama just because of this line from his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."

You can even buy a coffee mug with this question from one of his addresses, "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or a politics of hope?"

You have to admit, these are the types of rallying cries that make you want to see that person in charge. I do not think we have the same level of passion in our politics north of the border.

What we do have, is a system based on seeing what you can get away with before you are voted out of power.

It is unfortunate for the Conservatives that during the last election they hitched their wagon to the idea of moral superiority. One should never shine a spotlight on others unless you are absolutely certain no one is going to accuse you of leaking state secrets, hanging out with biker chicks, and bribing government officials. You just can't recover if you have already said you are beyond reproach.

That's what I remember liking about Chrétien and Trudeau. They played politics but they never claimed to be outstandingly ethical, always doing the right thing, sort of people; which is as it should be.

I want my politicians to be politicians. I want them to know how to run the country, to gamble in international politics, to manage vast quantities of money, and to make things happen in whatever way is necessary.

We have teachers, philosophers, poets and priests to help us see the other parts of the "big picture" and we need politicians to be the ones who know how to get the job done.

Don't get me wrong, the reason I like Obama is that he seems to be capable of maintaining the balance between working a system and still having dreams, vision, and most of all hope about the future. That is the type of person I would elect.

Do you remember the campaign slogans from the last election? The Conservatives asked us to "Stand up for Canada" while the Liberals said, "Choose your Canada"; the NDP were "Getting results for people". The two strangest slogans were the Bloq Quebecois stating "Thankfully, the Bloc is here!" and the Green Party simply saying "We can".

Obama campaigned on the slogan "Change we can believe in!" It might just be me, but these seem to elicit a lot more excitement about the prospects of the future than our parties manage to do.

But then again, despite the fact that so many of us complain about them, there are not that many of us who actually go out there and elect politicians no matter what the slogan. 64 per cent turned out the last time according to Elections Canada. Not bad I suppose, but consider this, first time voters are four times more likely to vote in an election than people eligible to vote a second time, and it continues to decline.

I suspect cynicism again.

Jean Ralston Saul wrote in Voltaire's Bastards about how the people that really run governments are the civil servants. Elected officials are more like movie stars, subject to a cult of personality and there mostly for show. I am not sure he is right, but the cynical side of me says that whether we elect Liberals or Conservatives not much is different.

So why do we vote one way or another? Sometimes it is to punish the party in power. But most times I suspect it is because we always have. You vote Conservative because you always have, because your parents always did, because you are Conservative.

Of course, that is not true.

Not many of us actually belong to political parties, those of us who do vote because of ideology I suppose.

But for most of the population we would be better off to forget about how we voted last time, how our parents voted, or even the current "promise of the day" of those hoping to be elected.

What we should do is look at the overall philosophy of the party involved. Historically what do they believe and how have they made it happen? How is that party going to make this country what it is supposed to be -- the best country in the world -- over the long haul?

We need to ask these sorts of questions because most of the election platforms we vote for don't really pan out.

Vote for me and I will lower the GST is great unless it means cutting social aid programs so we pay out even more money to the government in a different way.

We need to divorce ourselves from knee-jerk reactions to promises, and from the cult of personality of individuals. I don't care whether Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, Stephen Harper or Elizabeth May were to become our next Prime Minister. I would have some questions if Gilles Duceppe made it. And even though I don't care which one is in charge, I do care very much which party wins.

Like Obama, I want "Change I can believe in."